Canadian airlines are trying to make you cry this Christmas, and they're not the only ones. Welcome to the world of "sadvertising."

It’s a battle over which airline can make you cry more — but with holiday cheer, not frustration.

Air Canada has countered WestJet’s popular and effective viral marketing campaign with another YouTube video. This time they’re helping Canadians get home for the holidays. With two pilots showing up at a famous Canadian bar in London, England, to announce they’re buying everyone a round — a round trip home to Canada for the holidays.

The tears start flowing and the crowd starts singing O Canada and by this time you’re reaching for the tissues.

Last year, WestJet surprised travellers with a virtual Santa who asked for their Christmas wishlist – only to arrive in their destination to see the very presents they asked for spinning around the baggage carousel.

This year, they took that effort to the Dominican Republic, to a community where even the little things will make a big difference.

In the U.K. department store John Lewis has been tugging at the hearstrings for years. Just watch this ad about Monty the Penguin. Even the grinchiest among us will feel their hearts grow and something in their eye.

The Budweiser Superbowl ads, featuring puppies and horses, are just as pathos-filled.

Ads that make you want to cry are nothing new, but they used to be more the wheelhouse of global charities and hospitals like Sick Kids. So why are so many big brands trying to defrost the digital consumers jaded heart strings?

It’s all about getting you to remember and creating an experience with a brand, according to a Fast Company piece about the rise of “Sadvertising:”

“Never in our collective memory has there been a time in which ads—whose purpose is to make people positively inclined toward a brand and, ultimately, to sell products—have left us feeling all the feels. Was it just us? Were we going soft? Did everyone in advertising watch the carousel scene in Mad Men and immediately seek to make blubbering Harry Cranes of us all? Or is there something bigger at play? If you look at the current state of media, there’s more value placed on “meaningful” content—inspirational stories that you just have to see, or will change your world, and don’t even ask what happens next because it will simply blow your mind or break your heart or take your breath away.”

People are increasingly seeking “real stories” — think of the rise of reality TV and the backlash whenever shows are revealed to be scripted, the piece goes on to note. It also highlights the subconcious power of sad:

“Meanwhile, experts in neuroscience are offering more evidence that this ‘softer’ approach to selling actually works. The heart-versus-head argument in advertising is not new, of course—ad historians would point to ’50s-era adman Rosser Reeves, who represented the science/logic/head camp with his focus on a product’s ‘unique selling proposition,’ and Bill Bernbach, king of the art/story/heart school, who spearheaded the ‘creative revolution’ in the 1960s with culture bombs like VW’s ‘Think Small.’ But recently, marketers have absorbed more high-profile thinking and writing that posits that human decision-making is driven by our unconscious instead of logic, that ‘most of the business of life happens through our emotions, below the threshold of awareness.'”

But does “sadvertising” really work? According to Fast Company, it depends a lot on the ad and on the audience, so like all ads, it’s hard to say what will be a hit until it is.

So has Air Canada tugged hard enough at your heartstrings to make you book with them? Weigh in the comments.